Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this condition in the House. I know that women across the country suffer terribly with it, and often feel that they are not seen and not listened to when it comes to the treatment that they need. Our women’s health strategy sets out precisely how we will improve treatment for conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women, including endometriosis. It is about redesigning clinical pathways and removing the need for repeat appointments. There is a lot to do, but I can assure my hon. Friend that this is very high on the Government's agenda.

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

The Energy Secretary herself has admitted that Jackdaw will not bring down bills and will create only 27 jobs. The 2024 Labour manifesto said that the climate crisis is the greatest global challenge we face, and the UN has warned today that we are breaching safe climate limits, meaning more of the heatwaves, wildfires and catastrophic floods that killed thousands this summer. Can the Prime Minister explain why he is pouring more fuel on the fire of climate breakdown? Does he disagree with the overwhelming scientific consensus that fossil fuels must stay in the ground, or was the oil and gas lobby simply too difficult to ignore?

[The Prime Minister]

The gas would still be needed; it would just be imported from somewhere else if we did not use our own reserves. In these difficult times, when we have resources, the public would expect us to use them to secure jobs in Aberdeen, and I am sure that people in Aberdeen appreciate what has been announced. There is, however, a big difference between an ideological approach, which is what the hon. Lady is putting to the House, and a pragmatic approach, which is what I am announcing today. The truth of the matter is, the revenue that comes into the Treasury from this decision will enable us to speed up the roll-out of renewables and build towards a clean energy future. In the end, that will help us delink gas and electricity prices and get bills down.

House of Lords Reform

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Rosindell]

In a moment. We need also those who represent continuity. Sir John, you will know better than most that continuity is the foundation of the success of this nation. To ignore what has gone on in the past and to lose all that continuous wisdom from the ages is pure vandalism. We do not want another elected set of politicians who we know will be, effectively, appointed by party headquarters—the leader’s favourites will be put on some list and put into the House of Lords, even though many of them would prefer to be in the House of Commons—as a second set of politicians.

I want a House of Lords that is depoliticised in many ways, so I am not keen on the fact that Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have put so many people into the Lords who were friends of the leader at the time, or special advisers to Ministers and suchlike. What I want to see is more people who are truly representative of the whole country but can provide knowledge, expertise and experience to make our parliamentary democracy stronger and better.

It cannot be right that a political party that came third at the last general election has zero representation in the House of Lords. There are 80 Lib Dem peers, yet their party received 600,000 fewer votes than Reform UK. The Greens, I believe, have three representatives—

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

Two.

[Andrew Rosindell]

Two? Okay. Plaid Cymru also has representatives. The Democratic Unionist party has six, but only five MPs. The thing is disproportionate. There should at least be representation of all political parties. Based on the votes at the last election, there certainly need to be a number of Reform UK Members of the House of Lords.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing this important debate.

I represent the Green party. For many years, we have supported the abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement by a fully elected second Chamber. I am personally fairly agnostic about the exact format of how that should be done, but I fundamentally believe that a basic principle of democracy is that the legitimacy of the lawmakers comes from the trust put in them. I am talking about the authority entrusted in the legislature by the people, the voters—not by the people in charge of a political party who draw up a list from time to time, some of which is clearly related to the amount of money donated for years by some of the people who end up in the other place. It is not even through the legitimacy that an individual achieves within their specialised field of expertise because of many long years of practice in that field.

We should absolutely as a Parliament draw on expertise from across the full panoply of sectors in our country, but we need to ask ourselves who should be making the laws. It should be people who work on the basis of the trust given them by the voters, by the people, and on the basis of every vote having equal weight. That is why I am equally passionate about the importance of a proportionally elected Parliament. Fundamentally, we have a system in the House of Lords that is undemocratic and hugely unrepresentative in all sorts of dimensions and areas of demographics. It is untransparent because so much of the decision making about who becomes a Member is done behind closed doors. How can that be suitable for the 21st century? We have a huge problem with not only the composition but the functioning of the House of Lords.

It is, of course, important that legislation is properly scrutinised and that there are full opportunities to amend it. We have questions to ask ourselves in the Commons about how well we do those things and how well our system enables us to, but we do not fix them with an institution such as the House of Lords—no matter how effective individual Members of the Lords may be. Like colleagues here, I pay tribute to the work of so many Members of the Lords who take their role seriously, bring expertise and pay attention to the job that they are there to do. However, as the hon. Member for Stroud has pointed out, there has been a huge failure in the functioning of the House of Lords because, effectively, the will of a few of its Members has overridden the will of the House of Commons. That cannot be right, so we desperately need reform.

I welcome the proposal from the hon. Member for Stroud of a national commission on reform of the House of Lords. To address a point raised by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood), I should say that I would strongly favour the inclusion of a citizen’s assembly as part of that process. I fundamentally believe that a representative sample of the British people, representing all demographics and engaging in the detail and questioning of how we construct our political system, so that the people’s voice is heard, must be a fundamental part of any reform process. We cannot continue as we are—with an undemocratic, unrepresentative, untransparent second Chamber. We must have reform.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Order. We have time for only one more Back Bencher from the Government side.

International Update

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That will be very much part of the discussion at the summit, and I believe that that, too, is in our interests. If young people come here to study, they develop an attachment to the country, which often bodes well for us, for the rest of their lives, as do British students going the other way. These are the things that worked in the past, and there is no reason why this generation should not be able to take advantage of them. I welcome my hon. Friend’s generous support for what we are trying to do.

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Sagal Abdi-Wali), who was with us here earlier, and warmly welcome her to her place in this House. I also warmly welcome much of what the Prime Minister’s international update contained, particularly his recognition of Brexit’s disastrous effects on our country—as far as I am concerned, the faster we move to rejoin, the better—but there was no mention of the climate crisis. Does he not recognise that the climate crisis is one of the biggest international challenges facing us, that it requires us to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and that therefore—given that COP31 is coming up next month—the Government must rule out Jackdaw and Rosebank, and move with all speed to the future of clean, green, renewable energy on which this country’s future prosperity depends?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for welcoming what I had to say. On the climate crisis, I can assure her that I was not silent in my speech to the UN General Assembly; indeed, the Foreign Secretary convened climate crisis-related events in New York. As I have said before, we will be pragmatic on oil and gas, given that the country will continue to need to use them in the future, but where we agree is that it is essential that this country builds the strongest possible bridge to a renewable future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sally Jameson]

An independent, Capita-funded remedial adviser has been appointed to identify service delivery issues and to allow us to continue to hold Capita fully accountable. Around 147 surge staff have been deployed in this crisis. The Government remain committed to maintaining resource levels. No team members will be withdrawn from that surge team until service levels are permanently fixed. As I have said in my previous answers, we are using all commercial levers at our disposal, including withholding those payments, so that Capita is held accountable. We are looking closely at options for bringing the pension scheme in-house.

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

Numerous constituents of mine have had the same problems with the civil service pension scheme run by Capita. One example is Ruth, whose husband worked for the Ministry of Defence and died in service nearly a year ago. She has been waiting 11 months for a death-in-service payment and pension. Capita promised to have this resolved, with all bereavement cases done by the end of August. It broke that promise. This week, she is still waiting. This is utterly unacceptable. I welcome the Minister saying that there will be penalties for Capita, but does she not recognise that this is such a clear example that outsourcing does not work? Will she ensure that Capita is not given contracts like this ever again?

[Sally Jameson]

I thank the hon. Member for raising her constituent’s experience, which I am sorry to hear about. I have many similar examples in my constituency, as I know have Members across the House. I hope to provide a more substantive update in October. As I have said previously, Capita’s performance is totally unacceptable. I will not defend it, and I will continue to hold Capita to account every single day that I am in office, until the service levels are brought back up to an acceptable standard and all our constituents have received the pensions that they should already have had—in the hon. Member’s constituency case, 11 months ago—and I will continue to do that. We are looking at bringing the pension scheme in-house, and we are looking at the different viable options to do that. In our manifesto we committed to the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation, and we are all committed to doing that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sally Jameson]

I thank the hon. Member for bringing that idea to this House. I will be happy to put that to Capita when I next meet it, and if she wants to write to me with her case, I will happily ensure that it is escalated.

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

The next national adaptation programme, NAP4, is not due until 2028, but the wildfires and droughts we saw this summer and the impending extreme El Niño show that we cannot wait that long. Will the Minister commit to taking urgent action to tackle resilience before then and give our farmers, communities and householders the support they need to face the challenges of drought, wildfire and flood risk?

[Dan Jarvis]

I completely recognise the importance of the point that the hon. Lady has made; she has made it previously. The Government have established and tested response protocols in place for all severe weather events. The impact of each is often very different based on different factors, but I give her an assurance of the seriousness with which we take these issues. We are working across Government to ensure that our response is proportionate to the nature of the threat we face from climate change.

EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure, Ms Butler, to serve under your chairship.

Clearly, Brexit has been a disaster for Britain—the sooner we acknowledge that, the better our conversations will be, because we will then be able to move forward. It has been economically disastrous. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) said, it has been a slow puncture; in fact, it has been a huge slow puncture, taking 4%, 6% or 8% off our GDP, which costs every household in the country enormously in real terms. It makes us all much worse off.

In North Herefordshire, business owners have spoken about the additional barriers they face when trading with Europe and the admin created by the supposed reduction in bureaucracy. Brexit has been an economic disaster, but it is not just economic: environmentally, we are diverging from Europe, and in 28 areas of law, we now have weaker protection for our natural environment. Socially, politically and culturally, Brexit has been poisonous. It has catalysed and reinforced a toxic political debate, leading to polarisation, the proliferation of disinformation, political short-termism, and a discounting of the rights, opportunities and needs of young people in particular. The UK is now poorer, weaker and more isolated in a context in which we have a completely unreliable and unstable partner in the US President, and we have war on the eastern border of Europe with Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

[Rachel Gilmour]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Chowns]

I am sorry, but because of time I will not.

We are also facing the climate crisis barrelling down towards us. All of these issues require stronger co-operation with our closest neighbours. In that context, more than 10 years on from this disastrous wrong turn in British politics—this monumental act of self-harm—it is time to change course. I welcome the noises that the Government have made about resetting. That is certainly a start, but we need to be honest about what we have lost. We need to recognise the importance of co-operation and working together politically as well as economically. We need to recognise that the majority of the British people think that we would be better off back in the European Union, and that is why I believe we need to set out a path to rejoin. The best future for the UK lies within Europe. With the summit coming up, I hope that the Minister will be genuinely ambitious and deep in setting out the path forward.

Direction of Government

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am happy to give my hon. Friend that commitment.

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

The climate crisis is hitting hard already, and I was glad to hear the Prime Minister acknowledge that in his statement. We have just had the hottest summer since records began, farmers are facing the worst arable harvest since records began and the Met Office tells us today that extreme summers such as this year’s have been made 130 times more likely by burning fossil fuels. In that context, will the Prime Minister remember his words of last year, when he warned against the “siren voices” taking us down the path of “dependence on fossil fuels”? Will he stick to the manifesto promise not to drill any more oil and gas, and will he rule out Rosebank and Jackdaw, because the climate damage they would create hugely outweighs any possible benefit and will lead to more disasters such as we saw on the Nepal-Tibet border just last week?

[The Prime Minister]

I am ready to work with the leader of the Greens in this place, because I carry from my last role into this one a clear commitment to a carbon-neutral future. I do not resile from that in any way; I am proud of what I have done on that front. What the hon. Member has said is almost the opposite of what the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) said a few moments ago, but the wrong approach here is to be one or the other. We are going to have to find a way to make a transition from oil and gas to a renewable future, and that does not mean that it is all one or the other. There has to be a process where we can make a transition and do it as effectively and affordably as possible.

MPs’ Second Jobs: Prohibition

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for securing this very important debate.

Serving as a Member of Parliament is a huge honour and a privilege. It is more than a full-time job—and it should be, because it is a job that is about public service. That should be the only reason that anybody puts themselves forward for election to this place, and it should be the only reason that anybody has the privilege of serving in this place. One hundred per cent of our available time, energy and skill should be focused on serving our constituents—that and absolutely nothing else. It is really very simple: there should be no time available in an MP’s day for doing a second job, still less 16 second jobs. Our constituents’ needs for us to serve and represent them absolutely can fill every moment available, and more.

It is utterly shocking to me that the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage)—and yes, I notified him that I would be naming him in this debate—has apparently raked in £2 million over his past two years of “service” as a Member of Parliament. Just yesterday we heard that he was paid £270,000 for 12 hours of work. It is frankly obscene—

[Jim Shannon]

Immoral.

[Dr Chowns]

And, indeed, immoral that somebody is earning more in a couple of hours than the average person—well, more than the average person; nurses, teachers and others who dedicate their lives to public service—will in a year. It is extraordinary that in this day and age, this is still allowed. I agree with the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) that it is a hangover from centuries past. It is totally inappropriate for a modern Parliament. One hundred per cent of our time and energy should be focused on serving our constituents.

Why is it that this total anachronism endures and that those who do not have the interests of public service at heart are able to waft about doing all sorts of other things that do not contribute to the public interest whatsoever, but are motivated solely by what is simply personal greed? Let us call a spade a spade. If somebody is doing this sort of “work”, for these sorts of sums, there can be only one motivation: personal enrichment and greed. That has no place in a public servant, still less a public servant who has the honour of serving as one of just 650 MPs in this House, the mother of Parliaments. We must stop it.

I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Leeds East: we need a full ban on second jobs. Yes, we hope that Members will bring outside experience into Parliament, but let us achieve that by electing a far more diverse range of people, from all walks of life, to have the honour of serving here, and let us take steps in our parties to ensure that we do so. But once we are here, 100% of our time, energy and effort should be focused on serving our constituents. Otherwise, there is a total conflict of interest: are we serving ourselves or serving the public? We must be here to serve the public.

I call on the Minister and the next Prime Minister to finally end this outrageous, obscene anachronism. We must not count on the individual conscience of every Member, given that we can clearly see, unfortunately, that a tiny handful do not share a commitment to public service. Let us ensure that the baseline and benchmark is that nobody has a second job, and that everybody who has the honour of being here is 100% focused on serving our constituents.

Cabinet Office

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

I thank the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for introducing the debate so well. He makes many excellent points, including that we face a wide range of threats to our security and resilience. Clearly, we face threats from hostile actors and not just through conventional means: he talked about cyber-warfare and the threat of disinformation. He briefly touched on the effects of the pandemic on our country. The covid pandemic, which killed nearly a quarter of a million people, was the greatest threat to human health for many decades. Recognising pandemic preparedness as hugely important within the security and resilience framework is key.

Another key threat to our country’s security and resilience, which does not receive nearly enough attention, is climate breakdown. It is not just the environmentalists but the ambulance workers who say that, and the Joint Intelligence and Security Committee’s national security assessment itself says that ecosystem breakdown poses a clear threat to national security. The Committee on Climate Change has pointed out that we are woefully ill-prepared as a country for the effects of climate breakdown.

We urgently need to take more action to avoid causing climate change. Equally, we urgently need to take far more action to recognise the threat to our national security and resilience posed by the effects of climate breakdown. That was brought home to us in hugely clear terms last week, as we faced the second major heatwave of the last month or so. That heatwave led to record call-outs for the ambulance service—even more than under covid.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent time with the London ambulance service, which told me that the May heatwave saw its highest number of ambulance call-outs, even including covid, and that terrible record was exceeded last week. We have to recognise the reality of the effects on human life and livelihoods and the effects on our national security and resilience caused by these issues.

This is not just about the health effects. I spoke to numerous constituents over the weekend about the effects that the appalling temperatures faced by our students are having on schools. Clearly, we need urgently to put in place maximum temperatures for schools and workplaces and take action to ensure that that is followed through.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Member accept that there is a certain irony when the same people who are concerned about climate change and temperatures rising have campaigned for air conditioning to be taken out of buildings because of its energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions? We cannot have it both ways, can we?

[Dr Chowns]

I honestly do not recognise the caricature that the right hon. Gentleman paints. Technology exists to provide both heating and cooling in ecologically friendly ways, and that is absolutely what we need going forward. We need far better building standards so that we build buildings that adapt and are suitable, and we need homes that are fit for the future. That is essential.

The Committee on Climate Change—the Government’s independent adviser—has set out repeatedly that these solutions are available and has set out the things that we need to put forward. The Committee has also set out repeatedly, as have any number of people over any number of years, the fact that the costs of inaction far exceed those of action. The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) made that point previously in relation to other security challenges, and it applies with knobs on to tackling the challenge of climate breakdown. Twenty years ago, Professor Nick Stern set out clearly that the costs of inaction far outweigh—many times over—the costs of action to address these risks. After 20 years of our heads collectively being in the sand as a country, we are reaping the whirlwind of that inaction.

I call on the Government and the Cabinet Office to recognise the reality that tackling climate resilience must be a central plank of any strategy to protect national security and resilience. We need a Minister in the Cabinet Office whose responsibility it is to put in place that work and to take a cross-Government approach. This is not a siloed issue and cannot be dealt with in one single Department; it needs a cross-Government approach.

We need a comprehensive strategy to prepare the NHS for new public health challenges. We need to invest in flood protection, because we face not just extreme heat but flooding incidents of increasing frequency and severity. We have all seen what a disastrous effect that has on the economy as well as on lives and livelihoods.

We need to develop a comprehensive extreme heat strategy, a national drought plan and a farmer-led transition to climate-resilient food production. Our farmers are crying out for that support, and they too are on the frontline of the security and resilience challenges that the reality of climate breakdown places on us. We need to strengthen our transport infrastructure, energy infrastructure and water infrastructure. Last week, we heard about nuclear power stations going offline in France. Train companies were saying that nobody should travel unless it was a matter of life and death. Water shortages are becoming more and more frequent. The collective, long-term and strategic approach to tackling climate resilience must be a core plank of national security.

Tackling climate breakdown is not just an environmental issue but a central plank of security and national resilience. The costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of taking action now. Will the Minister commit to putting in place a national strategy? Will there be an individual identified in the Cabinet Office who leads on it? Does she recognise that we must invest now or pay far worse costs later?

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

All I will say is that it is important that we rebuild our industrial infrastructure and make sure that we not only maintain but strengthen our sovereign capabilities, not only for now but with forward-looking tech and investment. The Government are determined to do that.

A foundation of our national security is our ability to assess, mitigate, respond to and recover from the risks that we face, should they manifest. These risks could come from anywhere. They could be natural hazards, as we have all been experiencing over the last few days, or they could be deliberate attacks, disease outbreaks or other civil emergencies.

[Dr Chowns]

The Minister has not mentioned climate change. Climate change is not a natural hazard; it is a human-made major risk.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I agree, and it is important for the hon. Lady to understand that we are integrating climate change risks into our work. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is the leading Department on work on climate adaptation, not mitigation. It is important that lead Departments can focus on the issue at hand, and DEFRA is doing adaptation.

[Dr Chowns]

One of the key points that I tried to get across in my speech is that this has to be a whole-of-Government effort. DEFRA cannot put in place a strategy to adapt the health service to the reality of climate change. It cannot put in place a strategy to adapt our schools, our transport infrastructure or our energy infrastructure to the reality of climate change. Does the Minister not recognise that this has to be a whole-of-Government effort, and that it is not something that DEFRA can hold? That is precisely why we need a Cabinet Office Minister to lead on climate resilience.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The hon. Lady points out that adaptation is a cross-Government, cross-departmental thing. The way that the UK Government are organised means that Departments that are responsible for school buildings or transport deal with the adaptation issues that crop up in those Departments. I do not disagree with the hon. Lady’s analysis, but while the Cabinet Office does have a co-ordinating role, I do not necessarily think that having a Minister co-ordinating it would make an awful lot of difference.

Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

As I confirmed in my statement, more than 300 individual documents were put before the ISC for its consideration of proposals from the Government for redaction. There were a small number of redaction hearings towards the end of that process, when agreement was sought between the Government and the Committee, and all redactions currently published in the documents have been made with the full agreement of the Committee.

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

Like many of us here in this Chamber, I have not yet had the time to read the 1,000-plus pages of material released today, but the release shines the light of disinfectant on the political culture of how we treat the victims and survivors of heinous abusers of women and girls, and on the scandal of how Mandelson, despite being matey with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was allowed back into the highest possible office. Does the Minister agree that it is essential that this sorry episode in British political history leads to a fundamental change in political culture, so that the voices of women and girls who survive abuse at the hands of people like Jeffrey Epstein are always listened to and put front and centre?

[Darren Jones]

I certainly agree with the sentiment of the hon. Lady’s question. In relation to the time made available to read the documents, I refer her to the general debate on Wednesday, which she is perfectly able to attend.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Mr Fenton-Glynn, I am glad you have found your feet, because I could hear you shouting earlier. We will not be doing that next week. I call Dr Ellie Chowns.

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

The Prime Minister appointed Mandelson in a desperate and doomed attempt to pander to Donald Trump, despite knowing about Mandelson’s friendship with the paedophile Epstein, and his links to foreign states. The Prime Minister resisted vetting, and then took a “dismissive” and extraordinarily incurious attitude to it, compromising national security, and now he has thrown a civil servant under the bus to save his own skin. All this from a Prime Minister who pledged to restore trust and integrity in Government, but who has repeatedly betrayed the trust of voters and let the country down. Does the Prime Minister not recognise that the best thing that he can do to restore trust and integrity is to take true responsibility and resign?

[The Prime Minister]

Let me correct what the hon. Lady said. There was no dismissive attitude to developed vetting. I knew that the post was subject to developed vetting, and it was subject to developed vetting. What did not happen was me being told of the UKSV recommendation. That was a serious error of judgment. Had I been told, the appointment would not have gone ahead.